


Connoisseur of Aquariums

by earlgreytea68



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5001961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Eames isn't actually a connoisseur of aquariums.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Connoisseur of Aquariums

**Author's Note:**

> Reverse Bang fic!
> 
> THANK YOU to hiomiw for the thoroughly awesome artwork! I had a blast writing this fic!
> 
> Thank you to my beta arctacuda, who edited beautifully and also suggested the pun of "That's a Moray!" for the title of this fic. I didn't actually use the pun for the title, but, you know, I appreciated the suggestion.

“I am a connoisseur of aquariums,” Eames says to Arthur.

He’s not. He’s not in any way a connoisseur of aquariums. In fact, Eames has never once stepped foot in an aquarium. He says it because sometimes he just likes to say outrageous things to watch Arthur lift a dubious eyebrow at him in reaction.

Arthur lifts a dubious eyebrow at him in reaction. “There’s no such thing,” he says coolly.

“There is definitely such a thing,” Eames says, blithely ignoring all of the consequences that are going to come of this lie. “And that such a thing is me. I love aquariums. I go to one in every city we work in.”

Arthur folds his arms. An extra level of dubiousness. “You go to aquariums in every city we work in?”

“Can’t get enough of them,” confirms Eames.

“Good. Then you’ll have no problem forging a Moray eel.”

Eames hadn’t stopped to wonder why Arthur had a brochure for an aquarium on his desk. He probably should have.

“Oh,” he says. “Right. Absolutely. No problem at all.” Lies, all of them. He wonders briefly why he can’t stop lying to Arthur.

Then Arthur’s dubious eyebrow arches in his direction again, accompanied by a knowing smirk that Eames wants to kiss off of him, and Eames remembers exactly why he can’t stop lying to Arthur.

***

Eames goes to his hotel room and Googles “Moray eels.” He frowns at the results and says out loud, “What the fuck?” And then he prepares a presentation for Arthur.

He delivers the presentation the next day. It consists of a Pinterest board he’s created and the carefully rehearsed line, “I think it would be more effective if I forged an otter.” Said not too commandingly, so as not to offend Arthur’s delicate I’m-in-charge sensibilities, but not too shrinkingly, so as not to make it easy for Arthur to brush off. He brandishes his phone directly underneath Arthur’s nose, so Arthur can’t avoid it.

Arthur sighs and leans back in his chair. He looks resigned to this conversation with Eames. Eames is okay with _resigned_. Eames can work with _resigned_. _Resigned_ is one of Arthur’s more enthusiastic attitudes toward Eames. “Why?”

Eames knew Arthur would ask this. He has his reasons lined up. “Otters are playful. They gambol.”

Arthur lifts his eyebrows at him. “They gamble,” he repeats. “Trust you to find the sea animal who would be most at home in a casino.”

Eames says, “What?” then realizes. “No, not _gamble_. _Gambol_. G-a-m-b- _o-l_. You know, like, being playful.”

“No,” Arthur says.

“I know it seems unlikely, but ‘gambol’ is totally a word,” Eames assures him.

“I’m not disputing whether ‘gambol’ is a word,” says Arthur. “I am disputing whether you can forge an otter in the dream.”

“Don’t you want to see me gambol in a dream? By this I mean frolic.”

Arthur’s lips twitch in what Eames always chooses to interpret as a smile. “Moray eels probably frolic. They probably even gambol.”

“No.” Eames shakes his head firmly. “They definitely do not gambol. They are horrifying creatures. They can’t swallow, so they have a little tiny extra set of jaws in the back of their mouth that hops out to swallow things for them. Like, what the fuck, Arthur?”

Arthur twirls a pen between his long elegant fingers and regards Eames thoughtfully. “You weren’t worried about being a Moray eel yesterday.”

Because he hadn’t known what they were yesterday. “I hadn’t thought it through,” Eames responds primly. “Now I’ve had time to decide that your choice of a Moray eel for me to forge was incorrect.”

“The mark is obsessed with Moray eels.”

“So we’ll project some for him. We’ll ask Stanislav to—”

“Leave me out of whatever nonsense is going on over there!” Stanislav, their architect, shouts from the other side of the warehouse.

“We need a Moray eel with a consciousness,” Arthur says, “who can spy on what the mark does in the dream and report back to us. It’s a very important job, Eames, I promise.”

“As ever, thank you for your condescension, Arthur,” says Eames. “But you haven’t heard all of my arguments for forging an otter instead of a Moray eel.”

“Fine. Other than ‘they frolic,’ why an otter and not a Moray eel?”

“Otters—” Eames stabs a finger toward his phone—“are very handsome fellows.”

Arthur looks down at the phone, then up at Eames. “This is a Pinterest board. You created a fucking Pinterest board for this? A Pinterest board called ‘Why Otters Beat Moray Eels’?”

Eames beams. “I wanted to be in a position to present you with visual evidence.”

“Visual evidence that otters are more attractive animals than Moray eels? We’re not running a dating site here.”

“Given a choice, who would want to fuck a Moray eel?”

“Probably other Moray eels.”

“Only because they’d never been given the choice to fuck an otter.”

“I am not devoting any more of my life to discussing the mating choices of otters and Moray eels and, apparently, you.”

“ _I_ don’t want to fuck a Moray eel!” Eames protests.

“But the otter is a different story,” says Arthur wryly. “You can, if you like, forge a Moray eel who’s obsessed with otters.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” Eames grumbles, and goes back to his desk to contemplate how unreasonable Arthur is about Moray eel love lives.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Arthur calls after him, “I think you are definitely at least as fuckable as an otter.”

Eames considers his Pinterest board and decides maybe that _does_ make him feel a little better.

***

Eames has an entire hierarchy of aquatic animals. It’s a very long list. It goes on for several pages. He helpfully staples the pages together in one long line, one after the other, so that Arthur won’t have to flip any pages; he’ll just be able to glance down one very, very, very long list. The list starts with _otters_ and continues with _penguins_ and at the very, very end, down at the absolute bottom, Eames has written MORAY EELS with an eloquent frowny face next to it.

When Eames walks in the next day, he is able to dramatically unroll his Very Long List onto Arthur’s desk, where it satisfyingly unfurls itself all the way off of his desk until it is brushing the floor.

Arthur had been tipped back in his chair twirling a pen in his stupid distracting fingers and reading something. Now he tips the chair forward and lifts his eyebrows and says, “What’s this?”

“It’s a list,” says Eames.

Arthur looks at Eames, arching one eyebrow impossibly higher, and Eames wants to bite that stupid eyebrow. “Naughty and nice?”

“And wouldn’t you like to know which of those lists I would be on?” purrs Eames.

“I do know, Eames,” drawls Arthur. “I absolutely know which list you’re on.”

It’s weird that Eames actually isn’t sure which list Arthur would put him on: _naughty_ because of how annoying he finds him? Or _nice_ because he knows Eames would assume _naughty_ and Arthur loves to subvert Eames’s assumptions? _Naughty_ because of dirty, filthy, sexy fantasies? Or _nice_ because he doesn’t think about Eames in the context of sex at all? This is what makes Eames want to become the world’s foremost authority on Arthur, because Eames is never going to stop finding Arthur fascinating. He doesn’t understand why scholars are wasting their time with things like ancient history or subatomic physics when _Arthur_ exists.

While Eames is considering this, Arthur is reading the list, so that he interrupts Eames’s thoughts by saying, “Sea creatures? Is this a list of sea creatures?”

“Yes. In the order I would prefer to forge them.”

Arthur gives him a look. “Eames. No. You have to forge a Moray eel.”

“I don’t think you have considered the list,” says Eames. “In fact, may I draw your attention to the list? And how very long the list is? With animals that are not Moray eels?”

“But,” says Arthur in exasperation, “what do you not understand about the mark loving Moray eels? Katya—”

“Not getting involved with your weird aquatic animal foreplay,” calls Katya, the extractor.

“It isn’t foreplay,” says Arthur.

“It isn’t _weird_ ,” says Eames. “It’s only weird if you’re talking about Moray eels. Which, you will note, are at the bottom of the list. The very, very bottom. The last thing.”

Arthur says, “Below sea anemone? You would rather be a sea anemone than a Moray eel?”

“Oh,” says Eames, “so _that’s_ how you pronounce that. Huh.”

Arthur rolls his eyes and says, “Eames. Listen very carefully. In fact…” Arthur picks up Eames’s hand. Eames is so shocked that he doesn’t react, just stands there stupidly while Arthur lightly clasps his wrist in one of those elegant hands while the other elegant hand picks up a pen and writes in very clear letters on his hand MORAY EEL. He holds Eames’s hand up for him to see. “There you go. How’s that?”

Eames stares at Arthur’s handwriting _on his skin_ and wonders if it would be creepy to get that permanently tattooed there.

***

Eames stands in the dream and pouts. It’s a decent recreation of the mark’s stupid home with his stupid office with its stupid aquarium full of stupid Moray eels. It even has Moray eels in the aquariums already. Eames glares at them.

“Okay,” says Arthur. “How’s this going to work, then? You’ll change yourself into an eel before Katya gets here with the mark?”

“Well, I can’t change into an eel in front of the mark,” sniffs Eames. “He’ll probably suspect something’s up then.”

Arthur ignores him. “Once you change, I’ll pick you up and stick you in the water.”

Eames hates everything about this, most especially the part where he’s going to be flopping around inelegantly at Arthur’s feet. It’s going to be the complete opposite of sexy.

“Before I _die_ in front of you as an _eel_?” he says. “Thanks for sparing me that indignity.”

“We can’t have you die before you get to overhear the information,” says Katya coolly, studying her nails.

Eames sticks his hand into the aquarium water. It’s cool to the touch.

“Can we make the water warmer?” he asks.

“The warmest it can go is 86,” says Arthur, making notes in his moleskine.

“Why?”

“Because Moray eels don’t like water that’s hotter than that.”

“Fucking Moray eels,” mutters Eames, peering at them where they’re hiding under rocks in their aquariums.

“Okay, go on,” Arthur says.

Eames realizes he’s talking to him and not to Katya or Stanislav. In fact, Eames realizes, everyone’s staring at him.

Eames straightens away from the aquarium and looks at them and says, “What?”

“Change into an eel,” Arthur prompts.

“Oh,” says Eames. “We don’t need to practice that. Do we?”

Arthur lifts his eyebrows.

***

Being an eel is _horrible_. Eames wakes up from the dream feeling cold and wet and _salty_ , even though he’s not. He wakes up from the dream feeling slithery and slippery and slimy, even though he’s not. He wakes up from the dream _starving_ , and even though that’s probably residual eel-ness clinging to him, he still orders himself an absurd amount of room service.

He’s just finished his first hamburger when there’s a knock on the door. Eames counts the dishes in front of him, decides he’s pretty sure room service hasn’t forgotten any, and that therefore this knock on the door is extremely suspicious. More suspicious than his door getting knocked down would have been.

Eames peers through his peephole at Arthur, frowns, and swings the door open. “What do you want?”

Arthur is dressed in what he’d worn for work that day, three-piece suit without the jacket, sleeves rolled up to show off his forearms, because Arthur is a teasing tart. Eames showered as soon as he got back to the room, trying to wash the feeling of slick rubberyness off of himself. He is also currently trying to eat and drink the taste of salt out of his mouth. He’s not sure if he’s succeeding.

“You’re eating,” says Arthur.

“Did you come here just to state the obvious at me?” Eames clips out at him, because Eames is a short-tempered bastard after an animal forge, and he’d just been an _eel_.

Arthur looks surprised by the short response, then says, “Sorry. No. Didn’t mean to bother you. Sorry.”

Arthur turns to go and Eames feels like an arsehole (because he _is_ one) and says, “No, wait. I’m sorry. I’m starving, so yeah, I ordered food. Did you want some?”

Arthur pauses in the hotel hallway, his hands in his pockets, and he looks terribly sweetly indecisive about something, and Arthur is so seldom indecisive. Eames is caught by this beautiful oddity of Arthur apparently not knowing what he wants. He wouldn’t look away at this moment if a Moray eel appeared and bit his balls.

Well, maybe he’d look away then, but he wouldn’t be happy about it.

Arthur says, “I thought maybe you’d want to go out.”

Eames stares at him, into a silence between them that grows heavier and heavier. Because it’s not like they’ve never been out during jobs before—they have, lots and lots of times, just always with others, always in the ever-present context of the job. This feels different to Eames, and he doesn’t want to call Arthur out on it, but he also doesn’t know how he _does_ want to react.

Eventually, Arthur says, “You’ve already eaten.”

“I’ll eat again,” Eames says swiftly, and steps out of his room before any mind-changing happens.

***

Eames suggests restaurants. Arthur appears indifferent, shrugging at the suggestions.

Finally he says, “I’m not really hungry. You pick a place.”

Eames has already wolfed down a hamburger, and the eelness is starting to wear off, his hunger fading, so he says, “We don’t have to eat. We can just walk.”

Which is a pretty ridiculous thing to say, but it’s what they do. They walk and walk and walk, in silence, and Eames marvels at a number of things, starting with the joy of having appendages like legs and arms again and ending at _Arthur is here walking next to you_. Eames has no idea why Arthur is so silent and introspective next to him, but it’s nice to have him there, even completely quiet. Nice human company reminding him he’s human, and also nice because _Arthur_.

Finally Eames says, “We should do this more often,” and bumps Arthur’s shoulder with his own playfully, and then wonders if he should clarify. _We should do this more often, only post-coitally_ , which is what he really means.

Arthur smiles a little and looks at him and says, “Do you feel better?”

Which catches Eames off guard. He slows to a halt and says, “What?”

“It threw you. The eel thing. I’m sorry. Do you feel any better?”

Eames would kiss Arthur, except Eames doesn’t want to ruin this moment. Eames wants to roll around in the personalized attention of Arthur worrying about him, trying to make him feel better. Sure, Arthur is probably just making sure nothing jeopardizes the success of his job, but _still_. Eames is going to allow himself this fantasy that Arthur cares, that this is some kind of weird quasi-date, that maybe later Eames will kiss Arthur up against one of their hotel room doors and Arthur will let him.

“Things are looking better all the time,” says Eames, by which he means, _You. You look better all the time._

“This is weird, I guess,” says Arthur, “and probably not a good idea.”

This alarms Eames, who thinks this strange aimless walk was the best idea of the entire century. “No—” he starts.

“I got them ages ago,” says Arthur, “because the timing seemed so perfect, and I thought it would be funny, and now I just think maybe it’s a bad idea.”

Eames pauses, then asks, “What are you talking about?”

Arthur pulls two tickets out of his pocket, brandishes them. “They’re having a benefit at the aquarium here. I thought you, being a connoisseur of aquariums, would want to go. But it’s probably really bad timing, huh?”

All Eames can think is: _Arthur bloody bought you tickets like he’s taking you out on an actual bloody date._

Eames says, “We are definitely going to this benefit.”

***

Eames wasn’t sure if he would have a reaction to being in the aquarium, but when they enter he’s absolutely fine. In fact, he’s more than fine. He realizes he fucking _loves_ aquariums.

“This place is great,” Eames enthuses. “The _lighting_ is great. They have done a great job with the atmosphere.”

Arthur looks amused. “It’s always dim in aquariums, Eames. Because of the fish.”

“What?” Eames says, and then, “Oh. Right. Yeah. Of course.”

Arthur is still almost smiling, almost showing off that dimple, so Eames doesn’t mind at all that he’s been caught out on the fact that this is his very first aquarium. In fact, he’s almost relieved the game is up so he can actually _enjoy_ it.

Arthur leaves him staring at jellyfish to get them drinks, and when he comes back Eames says, “Can you believe anyone ever swims in the ocean?” and takes a long sip of what turns out to be a decent merlot, watching the jellyfish pulse around their tank.

“Yes,” replies Arthur. “The ocean’s amazing.”

Eames looks away from the marvel of the jellyfish to admire anew the marvel of Arthur. “You like the ocean?”

“Yes,” says Arthur. “Also seahorses.” He gestures to the next tank and sips his own wine. “Male seahorses get pregnant, you know.”

Eames considers the seahorses. They look like they should be fictional creatures from a storybook. He says, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to make of you sharing that fact with me.”

Arthur laughs, and Eames wants to press him up against the seahorse tank and press his face into Arthur’s neck and say, _That, do that again._

Then Arthur says, “Look, turtles,” and leads the way over to the next tank.

***

They spend a while standing in front of the main tanks, admiring sting rays and coral and schools of bright, tropical fish that drift by.

Then Eames cajoles an entire bottle of wine out of the bartender, and he and Arthur stake out a corner, settling together on the floor with their backs up against the wall. They have a perfect view of the tank, and they sip wine together in companionable silence as a shark swims past them.

Eames says, “You would make a good shark.”

Arthur says, “I would rather be a surfer.”

Eames says, “Do not even lie to me about such a thing, Arthur.”

“I grew up in California,” Arthur says. “Of course I surfed.”

Eames had suspected California, although Arthur’s trail was deliberately messy and hard to pin down with certainty. Now, knowing that it’s California, Eames imagines Arthur as a teenager, floppy-haired, just as lithe and wiry, paddling a surfboard over rising waves. He can see it very easily.

Eames says, “Do you still surf?” because he would really appreciate the visual of modern-day Arthur in a wetsuit.

Arthur looks at the sharks and says wistfully, “I don’t get to spend as much time near the ocean as I would like.”

Eames looks at the fish flitting around the tank and thinks of Arthur, relaxed and open next to him. It invites truthful confessions, Eames thinks. Arthur like this makes him want to spill every thought in his head. It could be the wine, or the close, cozy atmosphere of the aquarium, but mostly Eames thinks it’s Arthur, who seems younger now suddenly, younger and more human and more approachable, like someone Eames doesn’t just want to rough up but wants to tuck in close, listen to, breathe in. It’s weird but Eames tries to remember if he’s ever thought about the _person-ness_ of Arthur before. He’s thought about Arthur as a point, as an adversary, as an ally, as a smug, annoying twit, as a distractingly sexy tease, as forever unattainable and out of his league. He’s never really thought of the fact that Arthur is just a _person_ , and that fucking him might actually mean waking in the morning to drool on his pillow and morning breath and Arthur maybe being slightly sulky in the mornings.

Eames turns and looks at Arthur and thinks, astonished, that if he’s _lucky_ it would be all that. It wouldn’t be up against this aquarium tank or a hotel room door at all. It would be in bed, and it would last for years, and it would be Arthur asking if he’s okay, and Eames asking it back, and they’d just make sure they were both okay, and maybe that was all anyone could ever want from anyone. Arthur would be _this_ , and Eames would be _this_ , and _this_ seems like something Eames could deal with.

Arthur senses his gaze, turns from his own contemplation of the tank. “What?” he asks, sounding defensive, and Eames wonders what’s written all over his face.

“It gets in your head,” Eames hears himself say, and he’s never said this to anyone before, because he generally _can’t_ , can’t afford to have this weakness out in the world, general knowledge, but this will be good for Arthur to know, he thinks, because Arthur will want to make sure he’s okay. Arthur will know this, and Eames will know to bring Arthur to the ocean, that Arthur land-locked gets claustrophobic and dull.

“What does?” Arthur asks.

“The forging. I mean, obviously, yes, I’m sure you know that objectively, that that must be what happens, but I mean _it gets in your fucking head_. Sometimes you forge a nice person, right, a person whose head is a pleasant place, but most of the people you’re asked to forge, they’re really terrible people. You have to turn yourself into a terrible person to be them. You have to think horrible thoughts and do horrible things and then when you wake up you have to try to remember who _you_ were, and it’s just…not as easy, maybe, as you might think. Whatever.” Eames feels suddenly embarrassed about this, looks back at the tank of fish, downs his wine.

“I never really thought about it before,” Arthur says after a second. “I mean, you make it seem so—”

He makes it seem like it’s all a bloody lark. He knows he does. It’s part of the trick, the only way to make yourself believe it’s all going to come out okay: You have to believe your own bluster. He cuts Arthur off and says, “I know. It’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.” He wishes he hadn’t said anything. He doesn’t want Arthur to think of him as needy or pathetic. Why had it seemed like a good idea to tell Arthur any of this?

“And I just made you be a Moray eel,” is what Arthur says.

Eames actually laughs, because his life is so ridiculous and being an eel seems very far away at that moment and _really_ , sometimes for work he’s an _eel_. “They really only think about eating. But I’ve never been so happy to get arms and legs back. Fingers. Toes. Et cetera.”

Arthur is silent next to him. Eames pours himself more wine and watches the tank and wishes he could have back the companionable silence. He feels like Arthur is thinking really hard right now, about _him_ , and he doesn’t like it.

Arthur says, “Eames.”

Eames glances at him, eyebrows raised, because he’s sitting right there, after all. “Yeah?”

Arthur is wearing a serious frown and a steady gaze, and Eames doesn’t know what to make of it. Is Arthur going to switch the whole dreamshare strategy around now? Eames would have loved that earlier, but he doesn’t want Arthur to do it because he thinks Eames can’t handle it.

“Look,” Eames says, “don’t—”

Arthur reaches one very determined hand out to cup the back of Eames’s head and pulls him in for a kiss all in one fluid motion, not a moment of hesitation around him. It’s a chaste kiss, a press of lips to lips, but Arthur doesn’t drop his hand and Eames doesn’t move back. Instead, Eames collects himself and moves in again and _kisses_ him. Eames doesn’t know what Arthur’s doing or how many of these he’s going to get, so he figures he should give Arthur the absolute fucking best kiss of his lifetime. He kisses Arthur until he coaxes little moans from Arthur’s throat, until Arthur’s hands are clenched in his shirt and tugging at it restlessly, until they knock the wine bottle over and Eames pulls back in surprise at the sudden splash of wetness across his lap, blinking at it stupidly until he rights the wine bottle.

Then Arthur starts laughing, and that’s even better than the kissing, because when Arthur laughs he tucks his face in against Eames’s shoulder and anybody walking by would think they’re a couple in love, and frankly Eames is more than okay with that.

Eventually Arthur stops laughing, although he stays in place, leaning against Eames. He says, “You don’t have a tiny extra set of jaws in the back of your mouth.”

“Oh,” says Eames. “Thanks for checking.”

Arthur chuckles again. “I’m just saying: you’re not an eel. Right? You’re Eames. I’ll remind you of that as much as you want.”

“Are you going to kiss me every time I fear I might be an eel?”

“I’ll kiss you for other reasons, too,” says Arthur, head still against Eames’s shoulder, so Eames can’t really see his expression, but Eames almost thinks it’s better this way, in the dimness of the aquarium, Arthur nestled up against him. “I’ll kiss you for any reason.”

“Would you?” replies Eames, and turns his head to brush a fond kiss over Arthur’s head. “I would kiss you for no reason at all.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything, but Eames feels like he can hear his smile.

***

Eames is a perfect Moray eel.

Arthur reminds him he’s not a Moray eel by kissing every part of his body that a Moray eel wouldn’t have.

It works out well and they make a lot of money and Katya says to them, “I think it’s weird that you two find Moray eels sexy, but whatever.”

They take a very extended holiday, and Arthur tries to teach Eames how to surf, and Eames tries to teach Arthur how to paint, with mixed results all around. Eventually Arthur says, “We should just spend most of our time fucking,” and Eames shrugs and says, “Works for me.”

Eventually Arthur says, “We’re in demand.”

Eames grunts from the bed, where he’s working his way through _Candide_.

“We have six different job offers.”

“Why are you checking work email?” Eames asks.

“This one would net us about a million dollars. What do you think?”

“Who’s the offer for?”

“What do you mean?”

“It would not surprise me in the least to find you’ve hacked into my email account, darling.”

“No,” Arthur says, “this is _our_ email account.”

Eames puts the book down and sits up. “Ours?”

“Yeah, I set it up for us. I thought it would be easier. This way if anyone makes you be an eel again, I can be around to remind you about your arms and legs.”

“Other people can remind me about my arms and legs.”

Arthur looks thoughtful. “What about your penis, though? Can other people remind you about your penis?”

“Well, not as excellently as you do, petal,” says Eames.

“Right answer,” says Arthur, pushing him back so he can straddle him on the bed.

Eames looks up at him. His hair has grown shaggy during the extended holiday, and it’s a floppy mess all over his forehead, which is massively freckled from the extended time in the sun, and Eames thinks how he kind of doesn’t want to do any forging ever again, because he doesn’t want to be anyone other than himself, ever. “All the job offers want me?”

Arthur shrugs. “The ones I care about.”

“I’m happy to just tag along as a tourist, darling.”

Arthur cocks his head at him. “Yeah?”

It seems like a momentous thing to bring up as casually as this, but they’ve never done things exactly properly, and it hasn’t occurred to him until this moment. “I think I’m done,” says Eames.

“Done?”

“With dreamsharing.”

Arthur had been leaned forward over him, bracing his weight on his arms, but now he sits back a little, looking surprised. “Really?”

“We should maybe talk about my bank account, love. And its size. Which is enormous. Really impressive. Kind of like the size of my—”

“I know about your bank account,” Arthur says. He looks much frownier than Eames has seen him in a while.

“Darling,” Eames says, “please let’s forget this entire discussion if it’s—”

“I have a list for you,” Arthur says.

“A list? Of what?”

“Cities,” Arthur says, and rolls off of him and grabs his phone and carries it back to the bed with him and thrusts it at Eames.

Eames scrolls through the list. “Okay,” he says, not sure what he’s supposed to do with it.

Arthur is sprawled out next to him on his side, propped up on his elbow. He is smiling now, the frown gone, dimples on display. “Do you want to see the world with me, Mr. Eames? Because that is what I want to do most. Our itinerary, our schedule, our massive bank accounts.”

Eames says carefully, “Arthur, if you want to—”

Arthur shakes his head. “I don’t. That’s why I was going to just tag along with you. ‘Done’ is a good word to describe my feeling. I’m done with that. I’m interested in _this_.” Arthur doesn’t gesture to accompany the _this_ , but Eames knows what he’s referring to. There is no _this_ in their lives at the moment that isn’t _them_.

Eames says, “In that case, darling, lead on.” He glances at the list again. “Lisbon first, I suppose. Why Lisbon?”

“Best aquarium in the world,” Arthur tells him.

“Ah,” Eames responds. “And I am, as you know, a connoisseur of aquariums.”

 

_The end._


End file.
